Moreover, in the months that followed, much to his chagrin, he
received no serious job offers. At fi rst he kept himself occupied with
his boys, playing golf, going to the gym, and watching Bloomberg. As
time went on, he found hanging around Greenwich all day enervat-
ing and depressing. There were a lot of other guys in the same, sad
boat, but that was no consolation. It was like being in the company of
invalids, lost souls babbling about golf scores, trying to fi ll up the time
with aimless activities.
Maybe it was his imagination, but it also seemed as though peo-
ple who still had jobs, or whose hedge funds had survived, disdained
him, viewed him as discarded goods. Once he had been the brilliant,
sought-after Kid; now nobody asked or cared what he thought about
the market or wanted to hire him. How could he have fallen so far so
fast? He consoled himself by noting that literally thousands of hedge
funds had gone out of business and that he wasn’t the only experi-
enced, supposedly talented guy on the beach.
By the fall of 2009, he was bored and deeply depressed, and in
December, Emily reluctantly agreed to move to Virginia on a trial basis.
Disgusted with the stock market and worried about another
decline to new lows, Joe had put what remained of his money into
tax-exempt bonds. When he moved to Big Neck he bought Josh’s land
that fell gently in a meadow down to the river and eventually built a
house on it. These days Joe works some with Josh in his business and
coaches football at Big Neck High. He will probably be named the
head coach next year. However, he sometimes fi nds his involvement
with the team frustrating because, with Big Neck High’s enrollment
declining, the team is at a competitive disadvantage to the other bigger
high schools in Virginia whose student bodies are growing.
Living in Big Neck proved to be a diffi cult adjustment for Emily.
She was bored and lonely, and her relationship with Joe became
increasingly distant. Sensing her unhappiness, her mother reminded
her, “This is what happens when you marry beneath you.” As the boys
got older, the Daweses and Emily insisted with increasing vehemence
that they go to the better schools in Greenwich, and Joe had to admit
that the environment at Big Neck Junior High was not great.
Emily has now moved back to Greenwich to be closer to her fam-
ily. Although Joe and Emily stay in touch and spend holidays and part
314 epilogue
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