The Darkness

7

Morgan Isaacs didn’t want to wake up. He was lying in bed, forcing his eyelids closed, even though a few quick peeks told him it was after ten o’clock and the day had started without him. Again.

It had been just a week since Morgan had met with the real estate broker as well as his dad’s accountant (who didn’t charge him, thankfully, chalking it up to years of family service). Both advised him, without a moment of hesitation, to sell his two-bedroom apartment on Park

Avenue. Morgan pleaded his case, said he’d be back on his feet in no time, but Morgan wasn’t trying to convince the advisor as much as himself.

He’d have to give it up. All of it.

It was a sweet pad, with nearly seventeen hundred square feet, brand-new appliances, a hundred-fiftysquare-foot terrace, a fifty-two-inch plasma and a view that most Manhattanites would chop off their left thumb for. It was the kind of place Morgan dreamed of when he first enrolled in business school five years ago, taking on the kind of debt that would choke a third world country.

Sure, there were bigger apartments in NYC, but you had to start somewhere. And even with the real estate market taking a nosedive recently you couldn’t find a good twobedroom for under a million three. To get the three-and four-bedroom pads you had to plunk down close to two mil, and even though his debts were almost all paid off he thankfully had decided to stick with the twofer until his next promotion.

But then it all crashed down faster than a load of bricks.

The rumors began to swirl about a month ago that the bank Morgan worked at as a trader was having tough times, that its liquidity was nowhere near what the CEOs were claiming. Then he read a newspaper article saying there was a chance it would be bought out by one of the company’s competitors. Then, a week ago, Morgan got a call from his boss at eleven-thirty on a Saturday night, telling him to be at the office at 9:00 a.m. Sunday morning.

Morgan was there, dressed in a suit and carrying his briefcase, unsure of what to expect. When he got to the conference room he was informed, along with several dozen of his colleagues, that the firm’s equity had been bought for five cents a share, that the employee stock purchase plan was essentially worthless. Oh yeah, and that they were all out of a job. They would not be permitted back to their desks, and any personal items would be mailed to their forwarding addresses.

Morgan blinked. It was all he could do. They would receive one month’s severance for each year they’d been with the company. For Morgan, that was three months.

Three months that would cover his mortgage and BMW payments until he could find a new job. Surely that wouldn’t be hard. He had his MBA, his CFA, and had graduated from Wharton in the top five percent of his class.

Whether that severance would pay for the nearly thirty-three thousand dollars in credit card debt he’d racked up…he didn’t even want to think about it. Uncle

Sam giveth, and Morgan would be damned if he’d let

Uncle Sam taketh away.

Then the next day another bank closed. And suddenly the terrifying realization hit Morgan that he would be competing for jobs in a market where opportunities had just been halved, and his competition increased by two hundred percent. In less than a month there were nearly twenty thousand young men and women just like him, many of whom were just as qualified if not more, looking for the same opportunities he was.

Suddenly those monthly payments, over eleven thousand a month, loomed like a pile of bricks about to rain down on his head.

He went out that night to a dive bar in his neighborhood, fully intent on getting stinking drunk and hooking up with whatever girl noticed the two grand in jewelry he wore. Brianna be damned, she was going to break up with him anyway. He had no illusions about why she was with him. She didn’t care about cuddling or having doors opened for her. She wanted the gold. Literally.

Just like Morgan, Brianna would be getting a severance package, maybe a small diamond necklace, no more than a grand. Morgan was a big fan of The Sopranos, and he always thought Tony was brilliant for giving his jilted paramours a small token when he divested himself of them. The kind of women who dated Tony Soprano were the kind of women who dated Morgan Isaacs; they loved the money, the power (granted with Morgan it was on a slightly smaller scale). Once Brianna learned the truth, she’d be gone and in the pocket-and pants-of some upper manager who managed to hold on to his sevenfigure job.

So it was a morning like this, a Monday, a day where he should have already been on to his third Red Bull and second cigarette break, that Morgan Isaacs couldn’t bring himself to unwrap himself from the fifteen hundred thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.

He’d let his dirty blond hair grow too long, and whereas he used to weigh a trim hundred and eighty pounds, Morgan was now threatening to blow past the two bills mark. In fact, there was a pretty good chance he’d already done so, but was too frightened to step on the scale and know for sure.

Maybe he’d fix a breakfast. Toast with peanut butter and strawberry preserves sounded good. There were some good judge shows on in the afternoons. For some reason watching brainless poor people fight with some condescending judge over twenty-three dollars made Morgan feel better about his own situation.

Then he heard the chirp of his cell phone, still set to

The O’Jays’ “For the Love of Money.” He didn’t recognize the caller ID, and assumed it was a telemarketer. He was about to spin the dial to Ignore when he considered the faint possibility it could be one of the firms that still had his resume and had sworn to get back to him.

He answered the phone with a peppy “This is Morgan,” hoping to sound like a man who’d been awake all morning and not someone trying too hard to sound like he didn’t still have sleep schmutz in his eyes.

“Morgan Isaacs?” the man on the other end replied.

“That’s right.”

“I was referred to you by a former colleague, Kenneth

Tsang. I hope you don’t mind my calling.”

“Kenneth, yeah, of course,” Morgan said. Ken was a good guy, went a little too crazy at the strip clubs back when he was still working at Wachovia, and even after he was laid off the guy threw bills around like they were tissue paper. Ken was a good guy, but if you were stupid and careless, eventually you’d piss off the wrong person.

At some point, Morgan was sure, Ken would do just that.

“My name is Chester. Kenneth was doing some work for my firm and he passed your name along to us before his unfortunate passing.”

“That’s mighty kind of him,” Morgan said, scooping some gunk from his eye. “What firm did you say you were with?”

“If you’re interested in employment that will pay you quite handsomely with fair hours, meet me on Fifth

Avenue at noon. Northwest side of the street between

Fiftieth and Fifty-first. Right in front of the statue of Atlas.”

“I’m sorry,” Morgan said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but can I have a little more information? I want to be prepared, you know, just in case.”

“Noon in front of the statue,” Chester said. “Ken vouched for you. He said you were reliable and that you enjoyed the lifestyle your former employment afforded you. I promise that if that’s the case, you won’t be sorry you came.”

“Wait, how will I know who you are?” Morgan said.

His voice reached only an empty phone. Morgan sat there a moment, thinking about the call. Then he stood up, tossed off his briefs and marched right to the shower.

He had just over an hour and a half. An hour and a half to get his life back.