first thing he did when he had some money—the first thing anyone who never had much does—was go and try to give himself a few of the privileges he’d missed out on, growing up. It wasn’t that he had been poor—“But in my hometown kids didn’t, like, spend their summers abroad, you know what I mean?” But I did ask him why Asia, why not Europe.
“Keeping my eyes open for deals,” Harry explained. “Indonesia, Malaysia—very hot right then, George.”
He sounded disingenuous, and atypically so, but I let the comment pass, for of course that’s exactly what had happened. Harry couldn’t help doing deals; he walked out the door and a deal accosted him. He had stumbled up Nepal and through to China, found an undercapitalized electronics factory, and set them to making the new telephones. When the project was under way, he had called up his old Broder mentor for capital to finance the expansion. And then fatehad intervened—at least that’s how Harry told it—in the form of Chat Wethers, who had been sent over on due diligence for the firm. The deal had brought Harry back to the table; the coincidence had legitimized him to himself. There is nothing like running into someone to replace ambition, or chance, with fate as the apparent governing influence in one’s life.
“See, what I really wanted to do was to see some concerts,” Harry admitted, on our second XL margaritas. “That’s why I quit. That’s why I went to California: to see a show.” He named the peripatetic rock band he had hoped to follow around—by VW bus, no less.
“What show was it?” I asked, inanely. The conversation seemed to have taken a precarious turn.
“New Year’s Eve. San Francisco.”
“And how—how was the show?”
But Harry shook his head, staring down at his lap. It was horrifying: he suddenly appeared to be holding back tears. Or perhaps it was the alcohol that made his eyes bloodshot; he was a sweaty, unhealthy drunk. I could see him in twenty, thirty years, nodding off in the bar car of the Long Island Rail Road, mouth open, shot bottle of Wild Turkey on the grimy little table, breath spray in his coat pocket—except he was going to be too rich for that destiny.
“Canceled. They canceled it because one of the guys got sick.”
“God, I’m really sorry,” I said, as if someone had died.
He went on miserably, “I didn’t belong there anyway. Those groupie kids.… You know where I was staying? Just take a wild guess where I was staying.”
“I don’t know. I give up.”
“The Four Seasons. The
Four Seasons
, George. It was the only hotel I knew in San Francisco! We used to stay there on the firm.”
“But, Harry,” I said impatiently, “you know all those kids are from Greenwich.”
“But they
were
kids,” Harry said. He blew his nose into his napkin.“Maybe twenty-five-year-old kids, George, but kids. I was no kid.”
He looked at me dumbly for a moment, as if hoping for a refutation of the statement. When none came he sighed and said, “Once I was out there, I couldn’t go back. I stayed in San Francisco a week, took some tours, watched videos in my hotel room. Then I booked a flight to Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong?” I felt the seesaw of my respect for him teetering up a notch.
“Yeah. You ever been to Hong Kong?”
“No.”
He sniffed; sighed; seemed to find security in that. “Did you ever see them?” He named the band again.
“Yeah—twice,” I admitted. “Just twice, and one time the show wasn’t even that great.”
But it was no use apologizing: he looked wounded anyway.
The waitress came, and I excused myself and went to the men’s room. There I leaned against the sink and gave myself up to a kind of mirthless laughter. I kept picturing Harry in tie-dyes with crunchy hair. It was the saddest thing I had ever heard, or the stupidest or the funniest—Harry’s stealth mission to the West Coast, his elaborate acting out of the desire to acquire a teenager’s pop