Mes Dépêches

The first time I saw the chair again, after that first morning three years ago, at least one eye instinctively welled a tear.

In Heathrow’s Virgin lounge, Terminal 3, it’s the chair to which your eyes drift when cresting the foyer, looking out across a pit of refined businessmen sipping coffee, along with a few Alabamians ordering the entire menu because it’s free.

It’s the chair on the right, by the center aisle, nearest the bar. With an ottoman and a little black table.

The Brian who first sat in the chair, just about three years ago today, waited for Delta to shuttle him back to Atlanta. His two-year adventure out of the South’s capital city seemed to be at a neat conclusion, even if concluding was the last thing he really wanted to do.

No, he was only two hours removed from carrying someone else’s luggage down four flights of stairs, closing the door as what surely could have been the love of his life glanced back with a hopeful smile, knowing if not accepting the conclusion. Nine months together, three months sharing a shower, certainly not his longest but inarguably – if inexplicably – his happiest.

He was all of an hour removed from entering a cab himself, closing the stately black door for the final time after one last walk-through, leaving behind God knows how many memories – and God knows how many actual belongings, courtesy of packing procrastination, but that’s why they pay cleaners.

In the chair, over a glass of champagne, he scrolled through photos, from holiday lights on Bond Street to a January snow-coated Natural History Museum to the bright sunny spring of England’s Euros run. Photos from his own runs, from the stunningly excessive Albert Bridge to the stunningly excessive Albert Memorial, and of lockdown-romantic mimosas on the makeshift balcony outside of his bedroom window, overlooking the stunningly excessive Sloane Square.

There was excitement for the other side, to see family he had only been able to FaceTime since Christmas, and friends who called and texted but were fading into pen-pal status. Mostly there was fear about what this post-adventure world was to hold.

To the Brian in the chair, I say enjoy the champagne – and know the adventure doesn’t yet end.

---

Today I’m back in the lounge, never in that chair as it belongs to a different Brian, but again leaving London mostly refreshed, somewhat sad and entirely ready to be back in my own bed.

Three weeks between the UK and Italy, spending August like a European, specifically by not working. But Labor Day beckons and with it comes New York’s greatest season.

Interest rates are soon to come down, which of course means more excitement in the economy. Banking conference season picks up, and surely that trivial revision of unemployment data means the consumer is dead, but capital markets stand salivating at the trades to come.

Since Covid I’m simply an observer of the financial world, hardly anymore a participant. I comb the FT in Sicily and demand a printout of the Journal on the beaches of Antigua, as my employer keeps paying for my Bloomberg login while rebuffing my efforts at actual work. It’s a pleasant life.

Three years ago – impossible to believe! – three years ago, I sat in the chair and thought the adventure was ending and was despondent, then less than a year later felt the adventure actually ending and bolted for a new job. Now I walk down Park Avenue and see fresh suits on the bankers, wandering back onto the canvases of Mies and Skidmore, a little extra weight on the belly but purpose in the eyes and dammit I am ready! Ready for the adventure to end.

Three years ago, I would’ve sworn that while people might give up the masks in public, they’d forever wear them in public restrooms. I would’ve sworn that anyone with a mild cough would show self-restraint and stay home from the office. I would’ve sworn that no one would’ve been in that office more than three days a week. In each case I would’ve been wrong.

And now with three years of incremental wisdom, I was also wrong about the adventure. I am fortunate to have had it, I’ll forever treasure it and may always tear up when in Virgin’s Heathrow lounge with that chair, but God I want to be debating with Andrew Ross Sorkin, not watching him on television.

I want someone to ask my opinion, to nod and sound convinced when I answer. I want to lead a meeting again, to see a project come to fruition and a team of juniors made better because they were around me. When I retire I don’t want a watch – I want a legacy.

To Brian in the chair, get ready to live it up. You are going to have one hell of a story to tell.

And all that about finding purpose? Fulfillment? You just leave that to me. I’m on it.