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Penny remembers the year that this iconic structure rose from its bathtub of reclaimed silt and landfill. One cold March afternoon, 1987, she escaped her office—and headed across the West Side Highway towards the East River in order to clear her head and get away from her coke-addled boss, Marvin Bacon. Replete with a highlighted perm and annoying Long Island accent he was as soothing as nails on a blackboard. At that time, she worked for a small performing arts agency located on the seventieth floor of Two World Trade Center that managed the music bookings for Windows on the World, on the 102nd floor. Her breath forming frosty clouds and nose hairs freezing, Penny turned back toward the Towers and in that perspective, encountered a very unusual site. A construction crane was gingerly hoisting palm trees high into the air and delivering them through the steel girder skeleton and unglazed glass paneled roof into what would become the Winter Garden. She remembers watching and wondering how many exotic plants were transported and trapped in this cold northern city, far away from their tropical homes. How many palm trees and orchids were held captive and shivering in the Big Apple?
Taiwanese brides often traveled to the Winter Garden for their wedding photos. As if being photographed inside the Mecca of capitalism guaranteed nuptial tidings of good fortune. It was not an unusual lunchtime site, to stumble across several of these young women scattered about, serenely posed on the rose-colored Italian marble floor. Their smiles frozen and eyes locked in anticipation of the perfect photograph. Looking for all the hungry capitalists and secretaries rushing by, like sugary cake toppers; huge skirts arranged and spread out like ceremonial fans. Porcelain figurines enveloped in cloud- rests of lace and tulle.
This is my first attempt at blogging, though certainly not my first attempt at creative writing. In fact, some time ago, I started to write the beginnings of a story, loosely based on my life and experiences working on Wall Street at the fin de siecle of the 20th century into the first few years of the millenium. If y’all don’t mind, and I am not quite sure who, if anyone would be reading this blog, I would like to post piece-by-piece the draft of my tale. I am open to comments…and shared thoughts…so let us start kinda old school by stating, Once Upon A Time there lived a thirty something singleton in Manhattan of struggling means, named Penny Screech…
For Penny Screech, September eleventh arrived like any other cloudless and brilliant early fall Manhattan morning. Aggressively bright, sober and ready for the day’s work ahead. Glancing out into the interior courtyard of her Upper West Side apartment building, Penny could see a shaft of light casting tattoo patterns against the opposing brick wall, and just knew that it was going to be a beautiful day. Craning her neck skyward to find a sliver of blue sky, she confirmed her assumption. It was going to be the kind of rare day that brings warm, crisp, crystal clear weather to the Northeast. A fine day to sluice across the East Bay on a schooner. A bright morning to ride your bike through Central Park. Thoughts of playing hooky danced across her brain.
She was running twenty minutes late giving credence to somewhat questionable logic. “I am already so late,” she mused, “Would it be so tragic to miss one day’s jousting with the Type-A’s at the Firm?” This situation was compounded by the unusually fussy behavior of Lao Tzu, her spoiled eleven-year old tan and white Shih Tzu. As Penny hurriedly tried to make the bed, Lao gamely foiled her maneuvers to finish the job and get out the door– he would simply have none of it. Blocking her every attempt to straighten the duvet and fluff the pillows, he played a game of dodge, prancing madly across the surface of the bed, playfully barking and throwing his head back and forth. “What’s up Pup?” demanded Penny. Making a lunge for the animated ball of fur, Penny plopped Lao onto the oriental carpet that graced the uneven oak floor of her tenement apartment. She then finished up her task at hand.
Task completed, Penny padded her way through the bedroom, across the living room towards the fragrant coffee percolating on the corner stove. She carried her steaming cup in hand as she made her way back to her small bedroom closet. “What to wear, what to wear?” Penny muttered softly. Getting dressed was one of the few simple joys that supported her belief that she was a stylish New Yorker, and not just an administrative cog in a large multi-national investment bank. Dressing for success seemed to be a prerequisite demanded of all well-educated, meagerly compensated single women in this city. How to dress like a Fashionista on a budget that must include the weekly frozen margarita with the gals; a steep mortgage and maintenance that slithered in at just under $3500 a month? Not including utilities.
For the last four years, Penny worked at Fleming Brothers, an independent trading house founded in 1876 by two Scottish immigrant brothers. Steadfastly building their family Firm and fortune, Fleming Brothers today was a Wall Street powerhouse able to run with the biggest of the boys. With the original Fleming brothers long gone, the Firm, thrice sold, was a private investment bank run by a well-documented coven of thirteen white male bankers– all in their late forties to fifties. They took turns trading important titles, golf tips, women and millions as they danced around the bubbling capitalist cauldron. Transacting insider stocks quarterly, the incestuous Connecticut cabal was wealthy many-times over. Specializing in High Yield and Fixed Income, Fleming Brothers made money in both good times and bad. The Firm employed 13,000 people worldwide. Annoyingly, those housed in the London office insisted on calling Fleming Brothers “Flemings”. Penny suspected that this purposeful affectation was meant to dress down the Americans while flaunting the Queen’s English and a stronger currency rate, but of course she could be reading much into little. “Flemings” global New York headquarters was located in Tower 1 of the World Financial Center. It shared this office tower, the corporate gym and cafeteria with another large global financial institution who specialized in retail banking and travel. It was a happy arrangement that enabled its collective employees to enjoy gourmet lunches, skim lattes and clean towels at the gym on-demand. The World Financial Center–or WFC– built during the Gordon Gecko era of the go-go eighties; was a world unto itself, connected to the Trade Center lobby by a series of foot bridges. The riverside complex consisted of four independent towers that spun out from its honey-comb glass atrium center– the Winter Garden. This glass-enclosed oasis housed twelve acclimatized palm trees shipped from Arizona, several themed restaurants, Starbucks-keeper of the 3 pm life force, a Sunglass Hut with pricy pastel Gucci frames, and frequent lunchtime concerts to soothe transaction-frayed nerves.
…to be continued…
The Stylesmyths: Vintage Fashion Reportage On Broadway 