For the Love of Money by Sam Polk

Author:Sam Polk
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

CHAPTER 20

Protector of the Stupid

¤

In December 2002, at the age of twenty-three, I graduated from Columbia. The Bank of America job didn’t start for six months, and I had to move out of the dorms and find a place to live. Sloane asked if I wanted to move in with her until she graduated in the summer.

The next six months were some of the happiest of my life. I had a dream job lined up and was with my dream girl. I moved into Sloane’s studio apartment on 106th and Amsterdam and got a job waiting tables at Deluxe, an “upscale diner” on Broadway at 113th Street. Sloane went to school, I worked, and at night we’d roll her TV over and watch Lakers games in bed. I read the Wall Street Journal every day, and my fellow waiters would tease me, saying they’d known plenty of actors who waited tables between gigs, but never a banker. As I read about hedge fund managers or bank CEOs, I’d fantasize about someday being important enough to be in the paper myself. Sloane started talking about moving with me to Charlotte.

I spent a lot of time with Ben, who was having a harder first year of sobriety than me. He was deeply depressed; some days he could barely get out of bed. He cried often. I could hardly fathom that the guy sobbing on my shoulder was the same one who’d pulverized guys in college.

We often talked about how worried we were for our younger siblings, Daniel and Julia. They were still living with Mom and Dad; things had gotten much worse. After the split, when Daniel and Julia stayed with Mom, they had to fend for themselves. When they stayed with Dad, they had to deal with his rages and those of his girlfriend, Sara, a deeply sarcastic, easily infuriated woman. It was especially hard for Julia, the only girl in the family. That year she’d walked into a room and overheard my dad on the phone say he’d “fucked her brains out.” Julia didn’t know if he was talking about Sara or someone else. She’d called me, sobbing.

The effects of their fractured home life were becoming apparent. That year, at the age of sixteen, Daniel dropped out of high school. He smoked weed every day, and his weight was ballooning. Julia was also overweight. She hung out with a tough crew, got in fights, and started wearing her hair in cornrows.

After Sloane graduated in May, we flew down to Charlotte together to look at apartments. From the moment she stepped off the plane, I could tell she felt out of place. She loved fashion and culture, an LA-and-New York kind of girl. Charlotte was SimCity with fried pickles. We stayed in a motel that looked much better on the Internet than in person. One night, we were startled awake at 3:00 a.m. by a man pounding on our door, shouting. It was just a drunk who’d forgotten his room number, but when I saw Sloane’s face, I knew she wasn’t moving to Charlotte.

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