Diary of a Yuppie Read Online Free Page A

character could have produced a chamber with so little. But Alice was literary; her domain was words.
    "You think you're always the same, Bob. But you're changing, little by little, all the time."
    "In what way?"
    "Shall I put it bluntly?"
    "When do you not?"
    "Well, then you're getting hard-boiled. Or perhaps I should put it that you're trying to get hard-boiled. As if you thought there was something desirable about being cool and clear and above it all and looking down on poor scrapping mortals."
    "And there isn't?" But for all my jaunty tone, I was cruelly hurt. Who wants to be thought hard-boiled?
    "No! Sometimes I wonder what happened to the blue-eyed, laughing boy who sat next to me at Columbia and collected the famous lines of English poetry that had clumsy mates."
    "'My heart is like a singing bird,'" I promptly quoted.
    "'Whose nest is in a watered shoot,'" she came right back at me.
    "'Match me such marvel save in Eastern clime.'"
    "'A rose-red city half as old as time!'"
    "I could go on."
    "Could you, Bob? When I see you day after day, night after night, so wrapped up in one of these ghastly corporate raids, I can't help but wonder."
    "That's my job. The only difference between now and eight years ago is that now I'm making some of the decisions. When I was a junior clerk I had no responsibility. I might as well have been running the elevator. But I always knew the time was coming when I'd have my share. What else was I slaving for?"
    "Was that really it? You mean you always imagined that one day you'd be doing this kind of work? And loving it?"
    "Well, of course, I couldn't know I'd become a specialist in takeovers. But it was always going to be some aspect of corporate law. That's what being an attorney is all about."
    "Even the dirty tricks?"
    "Even what you call the dirty tricks. The trouble with you and Blakelock is that neither of you has the remotest understanding of the moral climate in which we live today. It's all a game, but a game with very strict rules. You have to stay meticulously within the law; the least misstep, if caught, involves an instant penalty. But there is no particular moral opprobrium in incurring a penalty, any more than there is being offside in football. A man who is found to have bought or sold stock on inside information, or misrepresented his assets in a loan application, or put his girl friend on the company payroll, is not 'looked down on,' except by sentimentalists. He's simply been caught, that's all. Even the public understands that. Watergate showed it. You break the rules, pay the penalty and go back to the game. Albert Lamb would do to any officer in Atlantic exactly what I propose doing to him. If not, he should be benched."
    "So you think Mr. Blakelock should be benched."
    "I'm certainly beginning to wonder about it."
    Alice was fair enough to give to what I had said some moments of thought. But then she came, in her woman's fashion, back to the personal aspect. "I guess what I really mind is your enthusiasm about it. If you thought of it just as a job, that would be one thing. After all, it's not your fault that American businessmen are such sharks. But the glee with which you ferret around in ash cans! Why do you have to want to do so much more than Mr. Blakelock wants?"
    "I've told you. He's old-fashioned. And I have to get ahead."
    "Have to?"
    "Well, do you think my family don't cost me a mint? It's all very well for you to spend your days with your poets and think high and lofty thoughts, but I notice that you expect private schools for the girls and that you like to travel and—"
    "Yes, of course I do. You don't have to be a financial giant to have those things."
    "But if I'm going to be anything, I'm going to be a giant. There's no halfway for me."
    She sighed. "That's it, then. You want to be what you're making yourself. It's a free choice."
    "And always has been. I haven't changed. That's where you're wrong. I could prove it to you in the papers I've