All This Life

But on that day, on that morning, Noah alone at the office from 3:00 to 4:30 when coworkers started trickling in before the NYSE opened, after he left Tracey the halved grapefruit and toast smeared with hummus and the note, after he’d already prepped both the meetings he was to lead later, after he did three sets of bicep curls with the forty-pound dumbbell he stashed under his desk, after he ate two hardboiled egg whites and organic blueberries, drank a kale smoothie, after he chastised his young assistant for what he characterized as a “latent undergraduate slack ethic,” after she sat looking at him as he bullied her with his idiotic words, after he watched her leave his office and commended himself at his deft handling of the situation, knowing he was helping her rise to his expectations, to be the best worker she could, mentoring her so she could thrive in this environment the same way Noah did, doling out this bit of tough love for her own good, her own career; after all this, Noah was alone for about three minutes with nothing much to do, and he considered another couple sets of bicep curls when his phone rang, and he yelled to his assistant stationed right outside, “I’m not here,” and she didn’t say anything back to him but he heard her greet the caller, and Noah retrieved the dumbbell from under his desk and started hoisting the thing and silently saying to himself, One, two, three, four, counting reps and feeling strong, feeling ripped, feeling like a champion, when he saw his assistant standing in the doorway.

“What?” he said.

“You need to take this.”

The weight hanging limply in his dangling arm, and he said it again, “What?”

She stood there.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“The police.”

The officer’s voice was male, low and raspy, like someone with a cold. Someone barely able to choke out the words he had to say.

Noah held the phone with one hand and still had the dumbbell dangling in his other and the officer gave him a cold, objective report of the facts that were known so far: A brass band jumped off of the Golden Gate Bridge about ninety minutes ago. They all had their driver’s licenses in their pockets, and he was alerting family members of what had happened.

“Is she okay?” Noah asked.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is she alive?”

“I’m sorry,” said the cop.

Noah hung up. He didn’t remember if the conversation was over or not. He felt an urge to wash his hands so he floated down the hallway with the weight still in his hand. Thankfully no one else was in the men’s room. Noah set the dumbbell on the counter, him at the faucet with a pond of soap in both his palms, rubbing them together for what felt like the entire workday and letting the lather and water wash over each finger, each nail, each freckle and hair and scar, and he cranked the water temperature up as far as it would go and kept his hands moving underneath it, the backs of his hands turning the color of cooked salmon and throbbing and did that one cop have to call all the bereaved families himself, or did they spread the agony around the station, each officer taking one or two? Finally the heat was too much to take, and Noah held them at eye level, watching every drop jump off his hands into the sink. His sister was dead. He had been told that Tracey was dead. His hands hurt now, drying them on his pants and walking out and leaving the water rushing, the dumbbell perched on the counter.

Back to his office, Noah needed to compartmentalize, to paste on his face a convincing façade. There was nothing he could do to alter the day’s events, so why indulge his emotions? It was like playing in a lacrosse tournament in college when he had a torn meniscus in his knee, not smart, not pragmatic, fucking painful, risking more damage, but he wouldn’t hear his coach’s pleas to step aside, to protect himself — he was going to fight to the end and he was going to win and no one could stop him, nobody.

So Noah didn’t tell anyone at work what had happened. He stayed and emailed and trouble-shot a client package with a colleague and led those two meetings with his team and ate a Cobb salad and even remembered leaving his dumbbell in the men’s room and got it and stowed it back under his desk.

Compartmentalize and conquer. Get through this. Don’t buckle. He was keeping the world at bay until he went into the kitchen for a bottled water and saw someone’s half-eaten toast on the counter, and his feet tingled and his heart sped up and he saw tie-dyed things in his periphery and he lost track of how long he stood and stared at the toast till another trader said, “What are you looking at?” and Noah said, “What?” and the guy said, “You’re just standing there,” and Noah said, “Oh.”