Hotel Living (26 page)

“I've been way free,” I hear myself saying. “I want boring next. I want Jeevan.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“Boss, Alkis is talking recession.”

“I
want
a fucking recession!” I yell, and people turn.

TWO DAYS BEFORE THANKSGIVING, I
walk into Two Boots on Greenwich and Seventh Avenue for a slice of cheese. There's
no one in line, so I'm done with lunch in ninety seconds. I step outside to light a cigarette, and the weather is unseasonably warm, so I shove my leather jacket into the plastic bag they gave me at the Apple store. I take a puff and glance at my watch. Six hours till my flight to Paris.

I am smoking away, imagining my nephew and niece running toward me at the airport, when I recognize a voice.

“You're still smoking!”

I see Erik hurrying toward me from Seventh.

I stiffen, bracing for a seismic shift in me, but it doesn't come.

“Hi?” Erik says.

He's swimming in an oversize Abercrombie & Fitch hoodie, and, if I still know him, that would account for his tentative greeting. He looks like what he used to sneer at. I could easily take him down.

“I'd be all, go for it,” Erik says, pointing at my cigarette. “But I'm coming from there.” He waves toward St. Vincent's Hospital across the street.

“Hi,” I say. “What happened?”

“Warren's son cut himself at a birthday party and we brought him to the ER for a couple of stitches. Nothing serious. I stepped out to get him a soda.”

“Parker cut his finger?” I ask lightly, surprised that I'm not surprised or even upset to see Erik playing dad.

He just nods.

“I hear they're closing the hospital down,” I say, and blow my smoke away from his face.

“Yeah, bummer,” Erik says.

“Mismanagement or real-estate something.”

“New York . . .” Erik says, and leans back on the Two Boots window. His legs relax. He's a different Erik, not the one I remember, who was always ready to sprint. I notice him taking me in, as if I'm someone he just met, or someone he'd known for years and now unexpectedly sees in a different light. I sense tension as he waits for my next move.

“I'm sorry about Constantine,” I say.

“Right,” he says, and looks down at his yellow Puma shoes. I could easily take him down for those too, but what would it prove?

“I am sorry I lost the rest of Constantine's postcards. Do you think they would have made a difference?” I ask.

Erik looks across Seventh at the fence covered in 9/11 memorial tiles. “No. Not really,” he says.

“That's what I thought.” I nod.

A man rushes out of Two Boots and brushes my bag. Erik makes his half smile, and I have this image of the past, of him outside the hut at Montmelian, the first time he smiled at me that way. “Is that yours?” Erik asks, poking at the Apple logo.

“That's mine. But it's not
for
me.”

“Still a techno snob.”

“I'm meeting my family in a couple of days in Paris,” I say, smiling.

“Greeks bearing gifts—” Erik stops, embarrassed, like he was catching himself slipping into an old habit. “Seriously, that's excellent,” he adds soberly.

“Finally.”

There is impatience on his face, and I have a hunch that he's about to bring up Kevin. He does.

“I hear you helped my brother with a due diligence,” he says, so casually that I know he is overcompensating. He knows.

I look straight into his eyes. “Does it matter?” I ask.

“No. Not really,” he says, once again avoiding me.

Another few dead seconds go by. Talking about Kevin makes me sad. I have a flight to catch, and I haven't finished packing. I put out my cigarette with my foot. “It was fun, Erik,” I say, exhaling the last of the smoke.

“Yes, Stathis, it was.” Erik gives me a full smile. And that is my sign-off.

Memories mutate; they overpower the truth. We keep what we wish to remember. It was fun and goddamn pain, all mixed together. We shake hands and Erik goes for that extra second, which I allow him because I don't need it.

“See you around,” I say, and walk north on Greenwich. As I turn the corner onto Bank Street, my phone buzzes.

“I don't believe this,” I answer.

“What?” Tatiana asks.

“Guess who I just ran into.”

“Who?”

“Actually . . . it's not important. How are you?”

“Huh?”

“How
are
you?”

“I'm good. I'm just checking in on you,” Tatiana says. “Make sure you don't miss your flight.”

“Still watching over me.”

Tati giggles. “Always.”

“I can't wait to see Markos and Zoë,” I say, sitting down on my brownstone's stoop. The trees on Bank Street have started to change. This might be my last fall in New York, and for the first time, I'm awake to how beautiful my block is.

“What did you get them?” Tatiana asks.

“Gadgets, iCrap . . .”

“Aww, I wish I were there with you to go shopping for gifts.”

“We'll go shopping in France. At that fruit market in Aix you've been e-mailing me about.”

“Oh my God, I'm such a good cook now. You'll gain five pounds in a
week
. Where are you guys staying in Paris? Hey!” Her voice turns dark. “I don't want you to see Teresa over there.”

“I wasn't planning to, but—”

“What?”

“Tatiana, she's been worrying about you. She calls me all the time. Tati, listen, she really—”

“Stop!”

“Okay . . .”

“Are you still in touch with Ray?” she asks, calmer.

“No. He sends me a text once in a blue moon.”

“Drop him.”

“Don't worry about him,” I say. “I have. I don't even understand his messages. I give him six months before he breaks up.”

“Do you know that he got high and beat the shit out of my mother?” Tatiana asks. “He sent her to the fucking hospital.”

“Shit. I did not know that. I'm sorry,” I say. “Tatiana, listen. One more reason you should call her. She's probably depressed, she needs you.”

“I'm working on it,” Tatiana says softly. “I will.”

“Good.” I light a cigarette. “Better sooner rather than later.”

“Things take the time they need to take,” Tatiana says. “Are you still smoking?”

“Well . . . things take the time they need to take.”

She laughs.

“Just because you moved to France doesn't mean you're the poster child of health,” I say, and there's an awkward pause. “Okay, I should not have said that. I am impressed with what you did.”

“What are you impressed with?” she asks suspiciously.

“You, leaving New York . . .”

“You don't know how I live here.”

“No, I do not,” I say. “But you sound happy, living with your father. I don't think I've ever heard you more together.”

“My father is in Berkeley. I'm kind of alone.”

“We are alone together,” I say, and out of the blue I think of Jeevan. I remember Erik and me holding on tightly to his dinghy, heading south to Tobago Cays, at the far end of the Caribbean, when Jeevan spotted a tiny red boat out in the middle of nowhere. Instantly, he started racing toward it, ripping through open waves—no life jackets or radio on board. “What in the hell are you doing!” Erik screamed. “You're gonna get us drowned!”

“He's my friend,” Jeevan said, pointing at the boat calmly and fearlessly. “I want to say hi to my friend.”

“Come here after Thanksgiving. Stay with us for a bit,” Tatiana says.

“Us?”

I process her silence while looking at my loafers, the loafers she picked out for me. “You never had the abortion, did you?”

“I've never been happier. Come.”

“I'm not sober,” I say.

“I know,” she says.

“What's your son's name?”

“Stathis,” Tatiana says.

S
PECIAL THANKS TO PETER ALEXANDROU,
Jonathan Burnham, Alex Cannariato, Aris Constantinides, James Connolly, David Cobb Craig, Tanmoy Das Lala, Stefanos Economou, Jennifer Farrugia, Makis Gazis, Brian Gerrity, Ozerk Gogus, Lisa Goldenberg, Christina Haag, Brian Hamill, Barry Harbaugh, Jonathon Irpino, Peter Jeffreys, Sofia Karvela, Alexia Katsaounis, Maria Koundoura, Eric Lee, John Lyons, Mick Malisic, Constantine Manos, Scott McCormack, Sandra Mintz, Ian Olson, Heather O'Neill, Marco Pinter, Jonathan Procter, Seth and Lauren Redniss, Marjorie Reitman, Celia Roniotes, Jody Rosen, Ira Sachs, George Samoilis, Eric Schade, Aria Sloss, Christy Smith, Blair Steckler, Alexandra and Judith Stonehill, Mickey Sumner, Karim Tartoussieh, Joshua Tierney, Lycourgos Tsirakis, Grigori Vyssoulis, Christopher Westley, Sallie Wiggins, Mauricio Zacharias, and—the most important person—my mother.

IOANNIS PAPPOS
IS A MANAGEMENT
consultant and writer from Pelio, Greece. He is a graduate of Stanford University and INSEAD business school, and he has worked in both the US and Europe.
Hotel Living
is his first novel. He lives in New York City.

Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.

“Ioannis Pappos's
Hotel Living
could be
The Great Gatsby
reincarnated in a contemporary hell beyond even F. Scott Fitzgerald's imagination. It's harrowing. It's smart and sexy; it's funny and tragic. It is, in short, a great and terrible beauty of a book.”

—Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize winner and
New York Times
bestselling author of
The Snow Queen
and
The Hours

“If Trollope were alive today and he wanted to write
The Way We Live Now
about New York's élite consultants, he would have written
Hotel Living
. Really a terrific book.”

—Edmund White

“I read
Hotel Living
in an evening. Pappos is a first-rate storyteller and keen observer of our current moment. The prose here shimmers, and the narration drives hard like the hard-living lives in these pages. It's a smart book that also happens to be entertaining and a damn bit of fun to read. I can't wait for his next book.”

—Anthony Swofford,
New York Times
bestselling author of
Jarhead

“What do you feel when somebody with no writing track record you know of hands you a manuscript? Profound misgivings? Right! Ioannis Pappos had asked me to read just a chapter of
Hotel Living
. My misgiving vamoosed on page one. Pappos delivers a fast-moving narrative set in the new model world of the international business culture. The sexual and social mores of a wired world are well and truly captured through sharp con
versations and vivid vignettes that get you feeling, Well, yes. Of course! These are the ways of our world.”

—Anthony Haden-Guest, author of
The Last Party
,
Studio 54
,
Disco
, and
The Culture of the Night

“Like a cross between
The Wolf of Wall Street
and Edith Wharton, Ioannis Pappos gets all the details right in this insider's look at love and money in NYC in the postmillennial age. Pappos is such a good writer, it's hard to believe he leads a double life in the trenches of Wall Street; but it is that combination that gives this moving story both its punch and density.”

—Ira Sachs, writer and director of
The Delta
,
Keep the Lights On
, and
Love Is Strange

“Ioannis Pappos may be the F. Scott Fitzgerald of the wired postmillennial age.
Hotel Living
is an unforgettable debut—an all-night party, a race around the world, a dangerous high-stakes game played in the violently competitive world of international business. The novel's urgent pulse, no-holds-barred pace, and heartbreakingly honest narrator will thrust you into a captivating story that is, all at once, about love, sex, class, greed, and the search for one's humanity against the blinding light of the American Dream.”

—Julia Fierro, author of
Cutting Teeth

“Ioannis Pappos's
Hotel Living
is a social novel of remarkable breadth and depth. His command of narrative and his complex characters make for a fast-paced yet thoughtful story of one man's experience in the rough-and-tumble world of high finance and the rougher world of failed love. Not only does Pappos make us understand, he makes us feel. This may be Pappos's first novel but it reads like the work of a seasoned writer.”

—Pablo Medina, author of
Cubop City Blues

“As he romps through the highs and lows of the global economy, Ioannis Pappos will make you laugh even as he lays bare the very real human costs of our recent—and current—economic troubles. Hilarious and heartbreaking,
Hotel Living
captures perfectly our own interesting times.”

—Scott Lasser, author of
All I Could Get

“From the caverns of New York finance, first-time writer Ioannis Pappos bursts out with a fast-paced tale of an unblushing Greek Gatsby living the high life, a party skidding toward destruction. The pleasures are quick and voyeuristic, the bedroom cold, the banter knowing. His protagonist is diffident yet accessible, bold but aware, an unbruised stranger grappling with a world of little consequence until the bright nights turn bittersweet.”

—Edie Meidav, author of
Lola, California

“In
Hotel Living
, Pappos delivers room service at its best and most corrupting. A searing and smart indictment of the players at the helm of today's global economy,
Hotel Living
is also sexy and fun, as Stathis, the son of a Greek fisherman, navigates waters replete with treacherous men and women swimming or drowning and not knowing the difference.”

—Pamela Painter, author of
Wouldn't You Like to Know

“In between the words, sliding out into the margins and slipping into our consciousness, Ioannis Pappos's devastating and engaging book
Hotel Living
reveals the dominant forces that have shaped the new millennium. Bold and insistent, this book is a creative response challenging us not to blindly accept the world around us as it appears but to see beyond the glib facade and discover what is real. With a sharp eye and inimitable worldview, Pappos has given us a work animated by the spirits of Bolaño through Pasolini to Edmund White. Blending clever prose
with piercing socio-political investigation, this book draws the line, ultimately asking each of us if we embrace the spectacle (what separates) or choose society (what connects).”

—Antonino D'Ambrosio, author of
Let Fury Have the Hour

“I came to regard each and every character as if they were real people, who deserved and provoked real emotional responses. Pappos's quicksilver touch of the New World is never convoluted or heavy-handed, even when describing love in its most complicated manifestations. There is a penetrating sweetness even in the most bitter regret, and a handling of Greekness reminiscent of Eugenides in
Middlesex
: something at once looming at arm's length and painfully unattainable.
Hotel Living
is nothing short of a masterpiece. It moved me and will continue to do so in more ways than I could imagine possible for a story told with such disarming clarity and plainness. Rest assured that we'll be talking
Hotel Living
for years, as will its overawed readers and reviewers.”

—Auguste Corteau, author of
The Book of Katherine

“Whew! I need to check into rehab for a week. I just finished reading Ioannis Pappos's bold, painfully intimate novel
Hotel Living
. All that booze! And blow! And unadulterated fucking! Yet rendered with such insight, and crafted with skill and compassion. Every decade or so a novel comes along that utterly captures the Zeitgeist of our benighted times. I think of
Less Than Zero
,
Bright Lights
,
Big City
, and now
Hotel Living
. Kudos for Pappos. This is a writer to reckon with.”

—Richard Stratton, author of
Altered States of America

“We've read and watched depictions of the reckless excess of our recent gilded age, but rarely do we get a glimpse into the inner life of one of its players.
Hotel Living
is
The Wolf of Wall Street
with a heart.”

—Mike Albo, author of
The Junket