FICTION        
   Before sitting, I looked out the window behind                                                      
my desk. The sky was overcast.    -   Weebly.com                                    

Chicken Hearts
by  Matt Ginsburg

​“Shut the door,” I said to Drew as he followed me into my office. Before sitting, I paused for a moment and looked out the window behind my desk. The sky was overcast; the sun wasn’t likely to break through anytime soon. Forty-eight stories below, commuters filed out of the BART station and scattered in myriad directions, like ants emerging from a concrete colony. Among the many things I enjoyed about my work as a bank executive in San Francisco was the view from my office. I would often relax by gazing at the city below and marvel how I was up here, but all those people were down there.
 
Drew flopped down in a chair across the desk from me. I intended to signal the seriousness of the situation by staring him down. I did that to younger employees when they got out of line. At 50, my greying temples and double chin already gave me an air of authority. After all, anybody that old on a trading floor had to be in charge of something or they wouldn’t still be around.
 
Finance was a young person’s game but management kept a few elders around because we knew how the game was played and were expected to mentor the next generation. My insight, gleaned from surviving in the trenches across countless market cycles, earned me respect. However, in this industry a wise man one day could become a has-been the next. At my age, the gig could have been up at any moment. That’s why I found it helped to puff my chest, squint my eyes, purse my lips, and try to look tough whenever I needed to ruffle someone’s feathers.
 
My facial muscles were just starting to contract when my mind veered. An odor blending alcohol and vomit wafted toward me. Really? I wondered. Did this guy not shower, or even brush his teeth? He probably hadn’t slept much. His cheeks were flushed, his skin sagged, his eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was a mangled mess. He looked like he did last night when I had left him standing on the sidewalk, doubled over, hands on his knees, still heaving after there was nothing left to expel.
 
It was year-end 2008 and the Financial Crisis was in full swing. A few months earlier Lehman Brothers had gone bankrupt and our overleveraged, mismanaged, financial system had dragged the entire economy into a recession. The dangers of unfettered speculation had come home to roost. The housing and stock markets were crashing, obliterating millions of jobs and trillions in wealth. The severity of the downturn was exceeded only by the Great Depression.
 
Fortunately, Hank Paulsen, from Goldman Sachs, was the Secretary of the Treasury. He organized a program called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, referred to as the TARP, that stabilized the banking system. Under this plan, the banks got bailed out, our bank received $25 billion, and our bonus pool was saved.
1
Or was it? Bonus day was still a month away and every day our circumstances grew more precarious. Blamed for the housing crisis and envied because of the bailout, everyone hated the banks, especially their most highly paid employees. Protesters were camping out in front of the homes of CEOs—though they were probably still a football field from the front door. The New York Times published a statement by a prominent trader who publicly surrendered his bonus to charity. That was intended to set an example for the rest of us.
 
But voluntary penance wasn’t enough. Some politicians sought to force bankers to disgorge their purported ill-gotten gains. Representative Barney Frank sponsored legislation that would confiscate all bank bonuses through the implementation of a 100% tax.
 
Our best hope was President-elect, Barak Obama. He wanted to preserve the system by spreading the wealth. He opposed the new tax and instead proposed a stimulus package designed to dole out just enough goodies to pacify the population and get us off the front page. Until that happened, it felt like the world was out to get us.
 
I managed the Equity Sales Team. Drew had recently joined us as a structurer. He was an anomaly on our team, having grown up on a farm somewhere in flyover country, or the “heartland” as he liked to call it. But he was a math whiz, having finished near the top of his class at one of those dustbowl universities. He made his way out to the Bay Area and was wasting away crunching numbers for a non-profit when one of our recruiters spotted him. This was his first real job, at least it was the first time he had ever pulled down any serious coin.
 
Drew didn’t look like a quant. He had shoulder length blond hair, a baby face accented by dimples, and a clefted chin. He wore these tight-fitting clothes—probably “skinny” this and “skinny” that—along with pointed shoes and clashing technicolor socks. He pushed the boundaries of even our lax West Coast dress standards.
 
His job was to create investment strategies that would offer unique risk/return profiles for our customers. He had barely been around for a year and was already helping us kill it by concocting products with margins you could drive a truck through. Some of his structures were so complex that I didn’t fully understand them and I’m certain that many of our clients didn’t either.
 
Drew was smart, but he also had that x-factor, a heightened desire to make money. Maybe it was his humble background, but whatever the reason, he was always seeking an angle. When he wasn’t helping us ream clients, he was propositioning his teammates. He took money from us by downing four shots of tequila while standing on his head, holding a plank position for 10 minutes, and reciting pi out to 20 decimal places. That last one blew me away and cost me a Benjamin.
 
I learned the hard way not to bet against him. The kid had pluck. I saw in him an echo of my younger, hungrier self, and over time I grew to like him. I felt the desire to take him under my wing and pass along insights that might speed his progress whenever the chance arose. 
2
​With Drew’s help, my team had had a great year, the best of my career. Our business generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profit, or at least we booked it as profit. And our equities business had nothing to do with the housing crisis. We deserved to get paid. As the leader, I was expecting a big bonus. Big enough to pay off the Lambo, the Tahoe chalet, and still cough up a tidy tithe for charity.
 
But in the midst of the worst financial crisis in nearly a century, nothing was certain. The public was clamoring for justice. Management could and would hang someone out to dry for the smallest miscue. We were all walking on eggshells. We especially couldn’t afford any bad publicity. That’s what made Drew’s antics last night such a shit show.
*       *       *
As the most senior person in the Equities Division, it was my idea to invite the Equity Trading Team out to dinner. I was the one person who could easily expense everything. It was the holiday season and our sales team had done loads of business with the traders. They had managed the bank’s risk on all the products that we sold. More importantly, they calculated our profits. Projecting income from derivatives wasn’t just basic math, it involved a lot of subjective assumptions. A nice dinner seemed like a good way to keep the traders sweet and bank some goodwill for the coming year.
 
Espetus, the all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse, or churrascaria, seemed like the perfect place to celebrate our good fortune. And for a time it was. Twenty of us, full of holiday cheer, emerged from a fleet of town cars and were greeted in the foyer by a blinking Christmas tree and a beaming hostess wearing a Santa Claus cap. Inside the main dining area, the walls were lined with red and green lights that gave the wood paneling and leather seating a festive glow. We were led around a floor-to-ceiling wine display and into a more intimate room where we were all seated around a long rectangular table that took up most of the space. Three couples were also seated separately at tables along the back wall.
 
The atmosphere was elegant, but we, and probably most of the other diners, had chosen the restaurant for its funky foreign format. The draw of a churrascaria is the unending supply of meat, delivered by trolley to the table whenever the occupants raise little table-top flags that indicate “bring us some more.” At this place, you could pig out and feel cultured at the same time.
 
We sampled at least half a dozen different cuts of meat and consumed so many bottles of wine that the restaurant ran out of several of our choices. The meal was enlivened by a series of toasts and boasts that in one way or another highlighted our success. When it was my turn to crow, I chose to remind everyone that the housing crisis was none of our doing. In fact, we had served up trades enabling our investors to short the housing market; they had all made money from the decline in values. If there was a theme to our declarations, it was that whatever was happening in the broader economy, it would have been worse if not for us.
3
​As our storytelling grew more raucous, I wondered about the couples sharing the room with us. They were starting to watch and listen. No one at our table had said anything offensive, but I worried that someone would complain, because you never knew where people stood. If anything negative reached the C-suite, it could torpedo everything. I thought to hasten our departure by asking for the check the next time the waiters appeared.
 
Before I could do that, a trolley of grilled, skewered chicken hearts was wheeled out. Each skewer held about eight juicy hearts that resembled tiny sausages, except for the aorta valve that poked out like a stem. Several skewers were placed on a silver platter, the meat still oozing brown drippings and emanating an offal smell. I was stuffed, but I wouldn’t have eaten one if I were starving.
 
I didn’t think anyone else would either. I thought we were finished eating when Jack, the largest of the traders and a former college linebacker, said he loved chicken hearts and could easily eat several skewers. Most of the group grimaced and guffawed. Drew, however, immediately took up the challenge.
 
I should have said something. I should have stopped it. But my mouth froze, I couldn’t speak. My mind was processing something else. My heart throbbed, my left eye began to twitch, and I began salivating. I swallowed hard. I knew Drew would win. I’d seen him in action, I had inside information. My stomach rumbled at the thought. I wanted a piece, a big piece of the action.
 
Sure enough, the thought of skinny Drew challenging beefy Jack to a chicken heart contest set pulses racing and wallets opening. It was a speculator’s dream: David vs. Goliath, or better yet, sales vs. trading. The opportunity to make money was so palpable we could taste it.
 
Ishan, one of the traders who liked to arrange weekends playing poker in Vegas, immediately began to make a market. It opened with Drew as a 3:1 underdog. Though the sales guys bet on Drew and the trading guys bet on Jack, the traders were more accustomed to throwing money around and their larger bets moved the odds to 5:1. That’s when I told Ishan to put me down for a grand and that collapsed the odds to even as the eating began.
 
Some of the bankers stood near the contestants offering encouragement, others were hanging close to Ishan, waiting to bet more if they liked a change in the odds. I was wondering what my max bet would be, sort of like people do on eBay, and thought I’d stay lean and keep it capped at two Gs. I was so absorbed in my monetary machinations that I forgot about the other diners. 
4
​After the first platter was finished, someone removed his red tie and secured it around Drew’s forehead, samurai style. He stood up and shot both fists into the air and we all cheered the gutsy challenger. The flag was lifted demanding more skewers and wads of money piled into the center of the table forming a salad of leafy green paper that complimented the plate of putrid poultry. Ishan recorded the bets on a white cloth napkin that he pressed against his neighbor’s back whenever he needed to update his tally. Another platter was finished and the flag put up again.
 
Everyone was standing now, hooting and hollering as more hearts disappeared. Even the waiters watched the contestants cram the spongy, oily globs into their mouths. With each finished skewer shouts of amazement rang out.
 
I was monitoring Drew’s progress. His face was expressionless, his eyes glazed, and at times his pupils rolled to the back of his head. It was the same look he’d had holding the plank for 10 minutes or reeling off that litany of numbers in pi. He was in the zone and I felt good about my bet. With the odds I got, I was going to win enough to fund a decent ski holiday.
 
As I considered increasing my bet, I thought of the risk, not of losing a grand or two, but the real risk from the three couples dining with us. I shot a glance in their direction. They weren’t eating. Their heads craned towards us as they occasionally pecked at their food. It occurred to me that one of them might take a picture since everyone now had a camera in their phone. I felt faint, a twisting sensation tore at the pit of my stomach, and my knees nearly buckled. A cold drop of sweat slid down my neck. How the hell was I going to get this situation under control?
 
Meanwhile Drew was hanging tough and the odds began to close. After about eight skewers each, Jack began dipping his hearts into his wine. It may have been a clever way to continue, but the market saw it as a sign of weakness. The odds collapsed to even. Kowalski, the head trader, had bet several Gs on Jack when the odds were 3:1. He was in trouble now and shouting encouragement at his brawny underling.
 
More skewers came out. Jack was persisting with his wine tactic. I wondered if it wasn’t a sign of weakness. I thought to hedge my position but the market was tapped out. Everyone had a position, every wallet was empty, and several credit lines ran to four figures.
 
One of the diners, a woman, had left the room. What for? I wondered, regarding her vacant seat with horror. My mind swirled with a litany of half thoughts until the spin cycle stopped and only one remained. We were fucked! Because of these idiots, my bonus was toast, maybe the rest of my career. My throat tightened, my head swayed, and my eyes pooled. I wiped them before any tears emerged. I was certain that the restaurant manager would show up at any moment and we would have to answer for our actions.
 
Then I realized that he was the answer. That’s it, I thought. As soon as this is over I would have him take care of things. I felt like I had drawn a lucky card and suddenly held a winning hand. A wave of relief washed over me.
5
After 78 chicken hearts, Jack shoved his chair back and threw his napkin into the center of the table. He was holding his stomach. His pallid face and trembling lips said everything. Whoops went up all around, but Drew kept eating, one last skewer just to rub it in. He finished with 86 and then pushed back from the table and stood to acknowledge the ovation.
 
Kowalski slapped Jack on the shoulder, a questionable move, and stormed out of the room. Ishan twirled the money napkin over his head, prancing like the groom at a Jewish wedding, all the while pumping a fistful of founding fathers in his other hand. Amidst the commotion, I slipped away to have a word with the manager.
 
I returned to see the contestants stagger from the table, their shoulders slumped and their heads pointed towards the floor, like dejected drunks who had been refused last call at the bar. There was a brief panic when Jack nearly collapsed in the middle of the front dining room. He dropped to one knee and rested, like he was still on the sidelines at Michigan State. God, I thought, not here you fat fuck, get your ass onto the street. The entourage pulled him up and helped him to the exit. Drew was already outside bent over.
 
 
They both hurled in front of another business a few doors down, depositing chunks of half chewed hearts that glistened amidst the steaming slop. Get it all out, I thought as I watched Drew heaving, coughing, and spitting. I expected to see him at his desk in the morning when the market opened.
 
The stench from the remnants of our revelry was nauseating. The fumes followed us into the street as we flagged down a series of taxis. Departing, I looked back at the noxious mess befouling the scene. The sidewalk was slathered with reckless regurgitation and I imagined the sorry sap who would have to clean it up. He would need a strong hose and an even stronger nose.
*       *       *
6
​I ignored the rancid smell that was permeating my office, scooted forward in my seat, and glared at Drew. I thought he might at least sit up in response, but he only had the energy for a quizzical glance. I leaned forward with one fist balled into the other hand, planted my elbows in the middle of the desk and laid into him.
 
“For a smart guy, you sure did a stupid thing. We shared that room last night with ordinary people. Did you not realize that?”
 
I awaited a response, but he only rolled his eyes and licked his lips. Stop doing that, I thought, wondering what residual flavors from last night he might be tasting. Though he appeared to be thinking, I couldn’t wait for his ruminations.
 
“We are in the middle of a global financial crisis,” I said through gritted teeth. I released my fist and pounded it on the desk. “Those people were spending their hard-earned money. They deserved to have a good time too. We ruined their evening.”
 
Drew’s head hung slightly, presenting a greasy glob of tangled hair. Then he lifted his bleary blue eyes and muttered, “I’m really sorry, man.”
 
“What if I told you that one of them complained and the C-suite cancelled our bonus pool?”
 
“No way,” he replied as his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. He looked down, covered his head with his hands, and bent over. I thought he might get sick again and decided it was best to reel things back in.
 
“That didn’t happen,” I said. “But because of your reckless behavior it almost did. You almost wiped out a lot of hard work by a lot of good people. Everything we built this year was set to collapse. If I hadn’t thought quickly, we’d all be screwed, you and I might be out of a job.”
 
“What happened?” he said, looking up and rubbing his eyes.
7
​I told him that while he was puking his guts out, I had whipped out my Platinum Card, instructed the manager to put the tab for each of those couples on me, send them away with a $250 gift certificate, and add a monster tip for the staff. I explained that although this was a lot of dosh, after the year we’d had I could easily expense a lavish bill at Christmas time. Especially when it was all about team building.
 
“So those people got a paltry piece of the action and our asses got bailed out.” As I spoke, I realized how the previous evening was connected to something larger, more permanent, even timeless. It connected to how we would escape the Financial Crisis. “Sometimes you’ve got to share a little to keep a lot,” I concluded. “That’s the American way.”
 
He was sitting up again, color had returned to his face, and his eyes emitted a spark of excitement. His animal spirits were returning.
 
“Now, don’t ever misbehave outside this bank again. Do you understand?”
 
“Totally,” he said, nodding his head and looking me in the eye.
 
“Go back out there and get to work.”
 
I slapped my hand on the desk, stood up, and turned towards the window. I was gazing down on the street 48 floors below when I heard the door click shut. It was raining outside. Some people were running and covering their heads with whatever they had. I looked across the sky at the dark clouds outside. It must be snowing in the mountains I thought.
 
I cracked a smile, folded my arms, and inhaled, slowly drawing the air through my nose. The odor in the room had dissipated, I thought, or perhaps I had just gotten used to it.
8
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​Matt Ginsburg received an MFA degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in playwriting at San Francisco State University. His work often explores his interest in business, economics, and politics. Matt has written several short stories, monologues, and comedy routines in addition to his focus on playwriting. His plays have been read or performed at numerous theaters in San Francisco. He has had four works published in previous editions of Vistas & Byways: “Finding My Father,” a memoir piece was published in fall 2019, and three short stories, “Midnight in Morocco,” fall 2020, “Victor’s Trophy,” spring 2021, “Johnny Logan’s Fight”, fall 2021. 
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.​
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