5. CONSIDER THE RAVENS

It was autumn. Johnny and I stood outside the H&Q building looking onto the plaza that stretched a block out to the corner of Samsome and Sutter. Late afternoon sun slanted in pale-yellow streaks through the trees forming shadows with intricate patterns along the walkways leading down to the streets, from which the faint sound of traffic arose. The air had the musky-sweet smell of smoke and leaves and far-away rain. It was that autumn smell I loved. I took it in but with only the slightest breath.

“Well,” Johnny said. He had the childish grin he always seemed to, as though there was never a moment that warranted concern. 

“Well, what?” I said, shifting around, my eyes narrowing as I looked at him.

“It’s not all that bad.”

“Easy for you to say.” I crossed my arms and looked away, back onto the plaza.

“Come on now, Dickson.”

“I just got downgraded to a Sell,” I said. “You know that.”

Johnny laughed under his breath and from the corner of my eye I could see him shaking his head. “If you think you’re a stock, then they’ve got you where they want you,” he said. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

“From a Strong Buy to a Sell. Just like that.”

“You’re more than a blip on somebody’s screen, Dickson.” Johnny put his hand on my back, his fingers firm and consoling and strange. I hadn’t felt the touch of another human being in months and it was apparent in that moment that I hadn’t missed it. Too much work, I thought, and pulled away.

“Look, two million is nothing to these fat cats, believe me,” he said. “I know the way they think—”

“It’s not just the money,” I said. “It’s how people see me now. It might not matter all that much to you—”

“All right. All right, Dickson,” he said. “Try smiling a bit. It might do you some good. You’re still around, aren’t you?” He put his hand on my back again.

“Barely.” I pulled away, shoved my hands in my pockets and took another flimsy breath.

“Well,” Johnny said. He pushed his hastily rolled-up sleeves, wadded like used paper towels around his forearms, past his elbows and pointed to a short stone wall that ran down one side of the plaza out to the Sharper Image store on Sansome. We walked over and sat down. Our building, glass-walled and towering in relief against the pale sky, cast a dark shadow over us and out onto the street’s dull pavement, cracked and beaten with potholes. Coming down the street towards us cars and buses flashed in the dropping sun and in an instant were lost in the shadow as they passed by. 

“It’s not that bad, Dickson,” Johnny said. “There’s more to the universe than what you see.” That grin was gone and now there was pity in his face, a softness to it, which I resented all the more. 

“Philosophy now?” I said. “You should stick to stocks.”

“Perspective is what I’m saying. It’s all about perspective. You’ll lose your mind if you don’t have it.”

“But I’ve got perspective.” I said. 

“You do. But yours might kill you—.”

“Or it might get me where I need to be,” I said. The words felt strange to say, as though they were placed somewhere in the depths of me by alien hands, long hidden but now surging reflexively for strength and courage and comfort. I stood up and started tapping at some dry leaves on the ground with my feet, the leaves giving off a little crunch as I smooshed them.

“Well. Suit yourself then, Dickson.” Johnny said. 

I looked up from the sidewalk and over at him. His eyes were fixed on a group of delivery bicyclists gathered in a shaft of sunlight poking through some trees not far away. A few of them had formed a hacky sack circle in the middle of the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to walk into the busy street to pass by. This irked me but Johnny seemed unbothered, a faint smile now appearing on his boyish face. We sat there in silence watching. 

Ratty clothes hung from their frail bodies, some thin and sickly, with arms sleeved in fading black ink and muted shades of blue and green. Body piercings glinted in the sun as their bony limbs moved in swift, jerked motions to control the limp footbag and launch it once again into the pale air. Next to them lay an old beat box blaring at such a volume that the music itself was indiscernible having transmuted into distorted electronic and plastic vibrations which bounced with fury off the cold hard ground. And with each passing minute uproarious, belligerent laugher would break out, entangled with blue-grey cigarette smoke billowing from their circle in wild rushes everywhere. I stared at them for a while, eyes narrowed. 

Life was easy making deliveries for a living, I thought. You ride a bike, drop off a package and your only concern is that you didn’t cause an accident in your wake, darting in and out of traffic like a bird; or it was no concern to you if you did cause one. Either way, your clothes, your hair, any attempt at a presentable outward appearance was a mere afterthought, and the likelihood was slim that it was a thought at all. Play hacky sack most of the day, right there in the middle of the sidewalk so half the world has to step into traffic to get around you, breathing in your godawful smoke in the process. What do you care? Nothing on the line and nowhere to go and yet expect the world to take care of you in return. It’s why they laughed so much. But laughter isn’t possible when you work one hundred hours a week, only to put yourself in a two million-dollar irredeemable hole. The godawful spectacle of it, I thought, standing there like crows.

I turned to Johnny, his face now appearing nearly angelic as it caught a bit of the autumn light. “Okay,” I said. “Then tell me what more is there to the universe than this, Mr. Seer?” I pointed back to our building.

“Seriously?” His eyes met mine.

“Well, in order to live you have to live for something,” I said. “And you have to live for something important for your life to really matter. We live for stocks.”

“Speak for yourself, Dickson,” he scoffed and looked back over at the delivery guys.

I grabbed his shoulder. “What? You don’t?” 

Johnny didn’t answer. He just shook his head laughing, not looking at me as he often did in that way that always made me feel terribly naive. “And what about them?” He nodded at the delivery guys. “What do they live for?

“Hacky sack?” I shook my head. “Hell if I know but it doesn’t seem for much.” 

“Dickson, what am I going to do with you?”

“So you don’t think we’re important? More than them?” 

“God.”

Johnny looked down at the sidewalk. He was shaking his head again but this time with no smile. “Dude.” His voice was sober now and I wondered if I offended him. He kept on looking down, shaking his head and contemplating. I sat back down, crossed my arms and waited, knowing that something important was brewing in him. After a while he took a deep breath and looked up at me. “The same sun shines on us all, Dickson. It shines on us all. You remember that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

He was silent. I often struggled with how much of Johnny's rhetoric to take seriously. He was a second-year associate, possessing the wisdom of experience I lacked as a first-year, yet there was an apathy to him that I found career-limiting and quite dangerous. He was habitually late to work, often arriving an hour after the other associates. He called everyone dude, even the women, and took delicious pride in cracking jokes aloud to no one in particular, often at the expense of the firm’s most important analysts and bankers. His disdain for office etiquette was eclipsed only by his peculiar scorn for dress codes. When he bothered to wear a tie, he managed only to hang it loose around his neck and his collar was never buttoned. His shoes were scuffed and somehow often untied. He appeared to be nothing more than a child and it was common understanding among the associates that he would be fired at any moment but the moment never came, as if he was eternally protected by some inscrutable force. It frightened me yet I couldn’t turn away.

“Dickson,” Johnny said. He was looking back up at our building, reaching high into the expanse above like a wall of blue-green sea, its shadow dark and profound cutting across the street. “How much are you going to give this place before you lose yourself completely?”

“Lose myself? More philosophy?” I said.

“Yes, lose yourself.” He turned to me. “The last month or so you don’t seem happy. I can hardly make you laugh anymore—”

“Lose myself?” I tensed up, making fists. “I’ve become myself. At least that’s what I thought up to today. And I don’t know what you mean by happy.” I looked away and over at the delivery guys, standing there crow-like, making a spectacle of themselves with all the smoke and the noise. A gust of wind picked up, swirling dead brown leaves in front of us in a tight whirlwind, their brittle edges angry, scraping along the ground. Happy? There was no utility in happiness, I thought. It won’t get you closer to the dream.

Johnny stood up, wiping his forehead like he would do when he was thinking something deep, and turned to me. “Look, Dickson I’m not playing their game,” he said. “You are. What I’m doing is getting a paycheck. That’s it. I draw my own lines and don’t take it all too seriously—”

“If you don’t care about the work then what’s the point?”

“Point is, I make enough—”

“Well as a second-year, maybe. But those damn delivery guys make as much as I do on an hourly basis, I bet.” 

“I can pay the bills, Dickson. All right? I don’t work too hard and they don’t ask too much of me. We kind of tolerate each other for the time being. We’ve come to what they call a tacit agreement. You see?” He sat back down and turned to the delivery guys.

“But what about your future?” I said. “Your career?”

“What about it?” he said, not looking at me. 

“Well, where are you going with it? Do you have a plan or are you going to be an associate your whole life?” I was angry with him and wanted an explanation. “For God’s sake we don’t make deliveries for a living. You have to be serious about this!”

“Serious?” He laughed at me. There was no urgency to him, which I could not understand. He just kept laughing and staring at the delivery guys, shaking his head. “Serious? He wants me to be serious…” 

“I don’t see how you can be in this business and not care is all,” I said. 

“A lot of good serious did you, Dickson,” he said.

“Screw you.”

Johnny scoffed. “Look. I do my job and go home and can live with myself, Dickson,” he said. “I haven’t given my soul away in exchange for a little money and a pat on the back is what I’m saying.”

“And I have, I suppose? Just come out and say it then.”

He paused for a moment, searching for the right words, wiping his forehead and shaking his head slowly. After a while he turned to me: “I wasn’t looking to get into this business, okay. It found me. Last year of college, I show up at career day and pop in the H&Q booth on a whim. I don’t know why, I just did. I answered a few of their questions, pointless ones honestly, and showed them I know a bit about tech. Maybe I was trying to prove something, I don’t know. I was tired of being ignored. You don’t know what it’s like to be ignored, do you Dickson? Well, turned out I knew more than their analysts did and more than every one of their bankers and they gave me a job. It made me laugh, really. All these business grads drooling to be one of their lackeys and I walk in and…. Look, I’m not romantic about any of this. You know that, right? You should know that by now, Dickson. I’m not sentimental about any of it. Not at all. They gave me the job because of what I know and that’s it. They don’t care about me as a person and I don’t give a damn about their bonus pool or their bottom line or any of that nonsense you all get hung up about for some reason, and honest to God I don’t know why. It goes right into the fat cats’ pockets anyway. It’s not a democracy. They throw you a bone once a year to make—” 

“On a whim?” I couldn’t bear him any longer and stood up, looking away.

“I know I’m good at what I do, Dickson. Guess that’s enough for me,” he said to my back. “I don’t need any one of them to tell me that. I know I’m good at what I do and I can give them what they want. It’s a tidy little transaction and it’s enough for me.” 

“Fine,” I said. Enough?

“A preppy guy in a suit won’t decide my fate in life I can tell you that.”

“Fine.” 

“Your problem is that you let other people decide what you’re worth,” he said.

I turned to him. “Less than two million,” I said. “And no upside.”

“See.” He had that grin again. “All worked up because you missed a comma.”

Damn Johnny Seer and his sanctimonious crap, I thought. I found him utterly revolting in that moment. Everybody was in it for the money to one degree or another—from the senior bankers and analysts on down to the administrative assistants. The inevitability of money was life’s animating force for us all except him, for whom the whole business apparently was a kind of playground, the work itself arbitrary and without repercussion; yet by some miracle of God he’d made it to second-year—a child who couldn’t dress himself if you laid the clothes out for him, a second-year. 

I shook my head and shoved my hands back in my pockets, looking down. Several pigeons walked by cooing, their grey heads bobbing back and forth. They stopped near a trash can a few feet away to pick at wrinkled food wrappers and paper bags tossed on the ground, their spotted wings flapping wildly whenever a pedestrian got too close. I walked back over to the wall and stood next to Johnny, with my hands in my pockets just looking at those damn birds with their tiny grey beaks pecking away at the damn garbage.

The wind changed direction again, blowing more trash down the sidewalk, the pigeons giving chase. Through the metallic distortions of the delivery guys’ music echoing in the shifting air, I caught the words of 2Pac, his voice melodic and solemn and fierce: “Full grown, finally a man, just scheming on ways to put some green inside the palms of my empty hands.”  I knew the song. 

2Pac had grit, I thought, and I believed I had a bit of that in me too, different contexts, but the same human grit nonetheless. He lived for his dream and I lived for mine, both of us according to the single and irrefutable maxim, “work hard and reap the reward.” Every minute of sleep sacrificed, every urge for human connection repressed, every shining not-of-work thing ignored was a step deeper into the hallowed ground of communion—communion with the dream. 

Yet as I stood there under the autumn sun, its light now tenuous and failing, the dream seemed to vanish before me like wisps of blue-grey smoke into thin air. None of what I do matters, I thought—my clothes, my hair, my words. None of it matters in the end. Everything is a hollow, godawful performance. All you have now is a two million dollar hole and everyone knows it. You are a fool to believe in a dream. You are a fool to believe in anything.

Johnny was seated on the wall silent and statue-like watching the delivery guys. I sat down next to him, weak-kneed and looked around. The world spun before me like a merry-go-round full of ghosts, soulless and bereft of purpose. God planted a dream in you that you can never touch. I heard the delivery guys with their laughter, mocking me as if they knew.

I sat down in the chair. 
His face was red.
I expect you to know what to do by now, he said.
I thought I did it.
Doesn’t matter what you think. Two million gone just that.
His face was red. 
I can work harder.
Two million. More than you’ll ever make us here.
I can work harder.
Doesn’t matter. Can’t trust you can I.
I can work harder. 
Who do you think you are who do you think you are who do you think you are, he said. 

God fooled you with the dream, a black hole of infinity in your eyes. And there is none more hollow you.

“I should quit,” I said.

“What?” Johnny turned to me, confused, wiping his forehead.

“Quit,” I said. “I should quit. What good am I now?” 

“Come on, Dickson,” he said and looked back over at the delivery guys. Immediately, I felt naked and regretted those words. “Well…It wouldn’t be because of the pressure,” I said.

“What?” Johnny turned back to me. 

“Quitting. It’s not the pressure or anything. It’s just…” I was looking at the ground, shaking my head slowly, throat closing as if in the grip of a snake and the tightness in my chest from earlier having returned.

“Of course.” He put a hand on my back. 

“It’s just…I’m sure there’s a better opportunity somewhere else, right?” I said. “Where I can really shine.“ 

“Sure, Dickson. Sure.” He paused. “Like where?” I didn’t know.

“It’s just…I’ve been here long enough to…”


“To what?” he said. “You’ve been here less than a year.” I didn’t know and paused trying to get a handle on myself.

“I can handle the pressure, Johnny,” I said at last, looking up but not directly at him. "That’s all.”

From the corner of my eye I could see Johnny looking at me, slowly nodding his head. “I know you can handle the pressure, Dickson.” He squeezed my back. “Good,” I said. “Good.”

I caught his eyes but couldn’t bear them not knowing if he believed me or if I could believe him. I looked back down at the ground and let out a breath. It was heavy and sharp and seemed to have been locked deep within me all afternoon. We were silent there for a while with the wind whipping around us, the delivery guys playing their game to our left and Johnny staring at them. 

“Good,” I said again.

“What?”

“

Nothing.”

For an instant, the air was no longer sulfurous with cigarette smoke but autumn-like. I took in a breath of it, feeling it in my lungs, feeble and shaking like a newborn. Another group of pigeons trotted by, joining a few lingering near the garbage can just down the sidewalk. I took my hands out of my pockets, poked Johnny with my elbow, and pointed to them. “Some life,” I said. “Pecking at people’s trash all day.” 

“Our trash, their treasure,” Johnny said, looking over at the birds.

“I guess.”

“No, really—”

“Rats with wings if you ask me.” 

“Well, you see, Dickson—” Johnny hopped off the wall and loosened his tie a bit more than usual, the knot now hanging near the third button down his shirt.

“Why don’t you just take it off?” I said.

“I never liked these corporate nooses.”

“Of course you don’t.”

“No need to be confined by the corporate straight jacket either—” he said, untucking his dress shirt, pulling on the tails to make sure it was all out.

“Right.” I was nodding. "Right.”

“Well, you see Dickson, there was this pigeon,” he said. “Someone found her at a construction site, I forget where…” He was bent over now, tying his shoes for once and looking up at me every second or two. “Anyway…she’d built a nest out of nails and bolts and screws and whatnot…you see, she’d built this nest with all the stuff the crew leaves out, just random stuff lying scattered around.”

“Nails?”

“Nails, Dickson. Can you believe it?” He stood back up having finished with his shoes and looked at me, his face serene, eyes flecked with the last of the autumn light. “They found her perfectly happy, right there, sitting on her eggs in a nest she made of nails. Perfectly happy going about her business, just sitting there on some damn nails.” 

“That’s some bird,” I said.

“Some bird, Dickson.” Johnny was still looking at me, but his eyes were fixed on some point along a horizon beyond me, the moment too still and profound for words. Then he snapped back. “That’s some bird, indeed,” he said, and glancing back over at the delivery guys, he pushed up his sleeves half way up his upper arms.

“Well,” he said and turned to walk to them.

“Where you going?” I said. 

Johnny didn’t answer. He just walked right over to the delivery guys, gave them a friendly nod and was welcomed into their circle. He joined the hacky sack game, playing like a kid, bouncing the beat up, limp footbag off his knee, his scuffed up shoes, his sweaty forehead. He looked perfectly ridiculous but the delivery guys, they loved it. He was one of them, at home right there in the middle of their smoke and their music, with the last of the autumn light falling all around like soft rain. After a while, he looked over at me, took off his tie, threw it on the ground and grinned. And for a moment I forgot all about the mistake.

 ###