“And just for the record, you know the last time I said, What the fuck, what’s a couple of cents EPS one way or the other- the last time I thought about how much business one of my companies does with Pace and what kind of recommendation might win us some more- the last time I put out an opinion I didn’t believe in one hundred and ten percent? Never. Not once. Not fucking ever.”
She took another long pull and smiled crookedly.
“Mom doesn’t talk about my work anymore,” Pratt said. “Now all she wants to know is when I’m getting married.” Another strand of hair fell into Pratt’s face, and she pushed it behind her ear. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “What the hell does this have to do with Greg, anyway?” she said. A truck rumbled by, and the air was burnt in its wake. I looked at Pratt, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
“Does he feel the same way you do about all this? Does he feel as
… let down?”
She took her glasses off and cleaned them on her T-shirt. Her face looked bare and confused without them. She put them back on and shook her head.
“It’s worse for him. Until all this shit, Greg bought into the whole star-analyst thing; he believed his own press. For years he lived on a steady diet of money and TV and people saying yes to anything he wanted, and putting up with all his crazy bullshit in the office. It’s like eating nothing but chocolate. And then overnight we went from being the village wise men to being the village idiots- or worse.
“It was hard on everybody, but Greg most of all. He’d been into it the most, and I guess he needed it the most. So when it all stopped, when people stopped calling…” Pratt ran her finger along the edge of the Bud label and began picking at it with a fingernail.
“I heard he went nuts.”
“From who?” she said, but she waved away her own question. “Fuck, it doesn’t matter. You heard right. He was off the wall for a whileobsessed with his reputation, convinced he was going to be left holding the bag for Piedmont and every other thing, while everyone else made out like bandits- really paranoid. He’s finally settled down to merely impossible.” Pratt drained her third Bud, and waved the empty at the waitress. Her glasses slipped down her nose and she pushed them up with her thumb.
“Why do you put up with it?” I asked her.
Her laugh was loud and girlish. “Beats me,” she said. She looked at me, waiting for a response. When none came, she shook her head. “You never heard that joke- about what the masochist said, when someone asked why she hung around with the sadist? Beats me.”
She laughed some more, and the waitress delivered another round. Pratt sipped at her fourth beer and found the chain of her thoughts again.
“If you don’t know him, he comes off like an asshole- vindictive, arrogant, nuts. But that’s not really Greg- not all of him, anyway. Like the arrogance. Some of that is just his sense of humor- he’s really sarcastic. And some of it is just… he’s like a kid who’s always got to be the smartest one in class and makes sure everybody knows it.
“A lot of his press was for real, though. What he can pull from a balance sheet is amazing, and the information he keeps in his head… You want to know the average revenue per employee of the top three database software companies or how much debt each one is carrying, just ask Greg. He’s faster than the Internet. I learned more from him the first month I was at Pace than I did in two years at NYU.
“And it isn’t just having the numbers handy. There’s as much art as science in this kind of analysis, and when it comes to the big picture- the macroeconomics, the forces and trends that can change whole industries- Greg sees things way before anybody else. He sees the shape of things to come.”
I swirled ice in my glass and looked at Pratt. “How did he end up on the wrong side of so many calls, then?”
She shrugged. “I don’t really know. Maybe he got a little too fond of one of his own theories, or maybe he didn’t pay enough attention to new data; maybe he was a little slow to reevaluate certain companiesI don’t know. Like I said, it’s as much art as science, and you don’t always get it right; no one does. At the end of the day, Greg was less wrong than a lot of people. The guy is a fucking genius, March.”
I nodded. “Genius isn’t always easy to be around.”
Pratt smiled ruefully. “You got that right,” she said. “But Greg can surprise you. He can be… nice. You don’t expect it from him, but he can be incredibly generous and loyal.”
I looked at her and raised an eyebrow. Pratt shook her head, and her hair tumbled free of the clip and fell around her shoulders. She didn’t seem to mind.
“I’d been at Pace a year and a half when my mom got sick. Breast cancer- very aggressive. It’s just the two of us, and she’s out on the Island, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I go into Greg’s office one morning and tell him about it- and that I might need some time off- and he just looks at me and nods and basically doesn’t say shit. Great, I think, real supportive. One more thing to worry about.
“That afternoon, he calls me back in his office. He hands me a slip of paper with an address and a time on it. Tells me my mom has an appointment the next day at Sloan-Kettering with the top breast cancer guy, and he’s made arrangements with Bobby Loyette about us using the corporate apartment if my mom needs to stay in the city for treatments.
“I was blown away. I just sat there, not knowing what to say. Greg didn’t seem to expect me to say anything. Hell, he barely looked at me the whole time he was telling me this stuff. I sat there, and he sent some e-mails, and after a while we started talking about Intel’s valuation.” Pratt picked up the bottle again and looked at it, but put it down without drinking.
“He’s fucked up, like a lot of people are.” She paused and stared at me. I wasn’t going to argue with her. “But he’s a decent guy too.” Pratt leaned back and worked her fingers through her thick hair. Her clip fell to the ground and she stooped to get it. She steadied herself on the table on the way up and laughed. “Christ, four beers on an empty stomach. You got me shitfaced.”
I nodded. “You want dinner? My treat.”
She looked at me and straightened her glasses. “And then what, you going to take advantage of me?”
I shook my head and laughed. “No more than I have already.” I signaled the waitress, who brought two menus.
“Why not? You married or something?” Pratt blushed even as she asked the question.
I smiled. “Or something.”
She nodded and looked over the menu.
The waitress came again and Pratt ordered a burger and a Coke; I had the vegetarian chili. Pratt was quiet, and I thought that embarrassment and worry might be setting in. I didn’t want her dwelling on it.
“I heard he had a lively meeting with Turpin the day he left,” I said.
Pratt smiled. “Lively- that’s a nice term for it. Any more lively, and we would’ve called the cops.”
“Any idea what it was about?”
“The same old thing, I’m sure: the lawsuits. That’s what Greg and Tampon always argue about.”
“Tampon?”
Pratt colored again. “That’s what Greg calls him. It’s kind of caught on.”
“I can imagine. What about the lawsuits do they argue over?”
“Fight or flight, Greg calls it: fight it out in court or settle. Greg is all about fighting.”
“And Turpin wants to settle?”
Pratt nodded. “That’s what they brought him in to do.”
“Who are they?”
“Management. They brought Tampon in five, six months ago-to clear the air, they said- so we could focus on other things. Apparently that meant settle the cases quickly, quietly, and as cheaply as possible.”
“Greg disagrees with that strategy?”
Pratt snorted. “It makes him crazy. He says they aren’t giving him an opportunity to clear his name and that they’re selling him out. Greg is not the most trusting guy in the world to begin with, and this plays right into his paranoia.”
“I gather he doesn’t have that market cornered, though.”
Pratt gave me a quizzical look. “You mean Turpin?”
I nodded. “If his attitude is anything to go by, Pace management seems pretty nervous about Danes.”
“Between the arguments and the rumors about another look-see from the regulators- and now with Greg
