41
Before the elections of November 1990, the President of the US had sent, after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, approximately one hundred thousand men to the Middle East, for purely defensive purposes of course, to defend Saudi Arabia from an unprovoked attack from Iraq and thus causing long gas lines in the US. Then that Friday, three days after the election, he announced that the Pentagon was planning to send an additional three hundred thousand American troops to defend Saudi Arabia.
Quadrupling the military forces in the region was not exactly what one would normally call a peace initiative. Of course, the President, like so many leaders before him, assured one and all that this huge increase in military force was solely for defensive purposes, although why one hundred thousand men had constituted sufficient defence on 4 November and on 8 November the number became four hundred thousand wasn’t explained.
In any case. Wall Street, which knows the difference between a peace initiative and the beginning of a war, acted accordingly. The stock market sagged, gold rose, and oil, good old oil, which was highly overbought, went zooming higher. The BB&P futures fund suffered a devastating loss, fully 15 per cent of the fund’s asset value.
That morning Larry first had to suffer through a long session with Mr Battle, who paced and brooded and questioned and lamented and could hardly believe what had happened.
‘No, no, no,’ Mr Battle said for about the thirteenth time, ‘this can’t go on. For three years nothing like this has ever happened. I can’t believe it. Are you sure you made those trades? I thought you’d developed systems that eliminated any such catastrophic losses!? Why, why, why? No, no, no …’ And so on.
Then he and Jeff huddled in the custodians’ rest room, a place both more secure and somehow more fitting for their present status. Or at least Jeff huddled. Larry raged.
‘Phone the bastard!’ Larry shouted. ‘Find out what the hell he thought he was talking about!’
‘I can’t!’
‘What do you mean, you can’t! He has a phone, doesn’t he? He’s still alive, isn’t he? Or did someone else who took his tip already wipe him out?!’
‘I … I … I …’
‘Jesus, first it’s no, no, no, and now I, I, I. Has everyone begun speaking in triplets? Why can’t you reach him?’
Jeff just stared up at him open-mouthed and afraid.
‘Well!?’
‘I … I just can’t.’
Then it hit Larry, completely and clearly.
‘It wasn’t a State Department friend, was it?’ he asked softly.
‘… No …’
‘It was someone feeding you inside stuff on a regular basis.’
‘Yes.’
‘He can get in touch with you, but you can’t get in touch with him.’
‘Yes.’
‘You were double-crossed.’
‘… I’m not sure …’
‘You’re a complete asshole.’
‘… Yes.’
42
Misery loves company, so Jeff and I, who rarely saw each other outside the office in happier days, now began to hang out together. This tendency was aided quite a bit in that no one else wanted to hang out with either of us. Although incurring notable losses is not as contagious or fatal as the black plague, on Wall Street it is treated much the same. Lesser people might enjoy being with those who are bigger losers than they, but successful people know that the aura of losing is communicable, and that if A hangs out with B and B is a loser, then, by definition, A must also be a loser. I knew that Jeff and I were in trouble when the custodians ordered us to stop using the custodians’ rest room. It was hard to see how much lower we could sink.
But the Battle family began to work on it. Their doors too began to swing closed or prove unusually sticky to open. At first Honoria seemed as aghast at the huge losses in oil futures as I was. But even as she tried to comfort me, I could see she was looking at me as if I’d suddenly gone totally bald and toothless: I suddenly wasn’t the man she thought she knew. And when I incurred further losses the next week in my everyday trading, I could tell people were beginning to sniff the odour of a loser, an odour, I knew, that no amount of expensive cologne, powerful deodorant or past triumphs could hide.
Suddenly Honoria had a lot of work over weekends Salomon Brothers seemed to have an outbreak of evening meetings that prevented her coming over to my apartment, where in the past we’d enjoyed my becoming a bull and going long and using maximum leverage, and Honoria making an opening offer, splitting her stock, getting her fill, and short squeezing, all leading to powerful upward thrusts in all the important markets and a final go-for-broke consummation of the merger. Honoria began implying that it might be desirable if I spent more time diddling with my technical indicators and less diddling with hers.
All this was rather depressing. Jeff had finally broken down and admitted that for his two earlier coups he’d been relying on someone with inside information, and though this man claimed Jeff had misunderstood his instructions, he had clearly double-crossed Jeff on the ‘peace initiative’, probably to permit X to double his own profits. I was almost relieved that my most horrific losses had been caused not by the sporadic unreliability of my technical work but by someone actually defrauding me. I gloomily told Jeff to pretend not to suspect X and to keep the lines of communication open. I think he assumed that it was because I wanted to join the ranks of cheaters, and was a little disappointed in me. I was actually driven by a more human motive: I wanted revenge.
No matter how chaotic and abnormal my five days in Lukedom had been, such chaos there was normal. That first week back in Manhattan was worse: the beginning of chaos in what for many years had been gleaming order. Even as I felt my world collapsing around me I tried desperately to be my old self again, that is, the man I’d been most of my adult life, the exception being those few stupid days when I’d gone a little crazy in Lukedom.
I left my father’s plastic dice and bronze die with ashes in the mahogany box and placed it neatly at the back of a top shelf of my study bookcase, so recessed that no one would ever notice it and ask embarrassing questions. Although Honoria was quite happy Luke Rhinehart was dead, my feelings remained confused.
First of all, I didn’t entirely believe that he was dead. Second, when I did somewhat believe that he might be dead, my feelings varied from a vague sadness to a bitter smile. In either case I felt no sense of completion. I still resented him for abandoning me years before and now resented him additionally for daring to make a claim on me, a claim he’d in no way earned. The idea that I had to prove myself worthy of my father seemed grossly unfair. I fantasized shouting at him that it was he, the father, who should go through a period of trial before deserving reconciliation with me rather than vice versa. I should set up a series of tests that would force him to prove that he was stable, reliable, consistent, unchanging, predictable – as regular as a healthy set of bowels. That would teach the bastard.
All through November things slid further and further downhill. On those rare occasions that Honoria agreed to see me she insisted on going over my technical work to see what I might be doing wrong. When I tried to talk about the coming child she grew silent, implying that having a baby was not something she intended to get excited about until it came. When I approached her with straight male lust my kisses were returned with such tightness and lack of juice it was like kissing two thin strips of boiled leather.
I began to acknowledge how much I missed Kim, but a few phone calls failed to locate her.
Thank God she was a slut. Otherwise I’d feel I had really lost someone important. Of course I continued to long for my slut and soon was madder at her for not letting me locate her than for her sluttishness. I alternated between longing achingly for Kim and longing greedily for a full return to Honoria’s good graces; between lusting for a great trading coup and wanting to dynamite Wall Street and take to sea in my sailboat. In brief, I behaved like a frustrated child. In the end, I began, quite dec
isively, to mope.
I began standing late at night staring into my mediane cabinet and wondering exactly how many of my various sedatives I’d have to take to earn the big sleep. Once, during a cab strike when I’d been forced to use the subway, I found myself late in the evening on the edge of the platform staring down at the tracks, thinking how easy it would be to time my leap a few seconds before the speeding express train raced in. And there was almost no one around to notice or care, the platform being almost empty. Tears of self-pity welling in my eyes, I edged closer yet.
In the distance came the muffled roar of the approaching train. Hearing it, I became convinced that not only could I jump but that I would. That’ll show ’em!! I felt the strange thrill-chill of exhilaration-terror of the martyrish adolescent as I moved to the very edge of the platform and watched the train come barrelling out of the black maw to my left and tear towards me.
Suddenly there was an arm around my neck and something poking in my back and I was pulled roughly away from the track. So fast did this happen that it was only half a minute later that I realized that two young thugs had pulled out my wallet, ripped off my watch and were sprinting away down the platform and up some stairs. The express train had rushed on past without me. In Manhattan it’s never possible to do anything in peace.
As the gloomy days continued I didn’t know which was worse: the times my colleagues totally avoided me or the times I actually spent with them. Once, too depressed to face sharing another downer lunch with Jeff, I shuffled down Broad Street and unthinkingly entered the first restaurant I came to, only to be greeted by a surprised Mr Battle and Brad Burner, who were apparently having lunch with some banker friend of theirs. They looked deeply embarrassed, but when I admitted that I was alone Mr Battle insisted I join them.
After we’d been served our cocktails and hors d’oeuvres and ordered our dinners, the conversation was barrelling forward about, naturally, money. Although we were sealed at a small round table. I felt separated from the rest. In the middle of the ongoing conversation I finally found myself participating. Sort of.
‘I’m burned out,’ I announced glumly to no one in particular.
‘That’s very good,’ Mr Battle said to Brad, continuing their discussion. ‘Who could ask for anything more?’
‘Exactly,’ said Brad. ‘I think we may as much as double our position. It’s a kind of hidden monopoly without government regulation.’
‘All our work seems so ineffectual,’ I continued, staring out into nowhere.
‘That’s the key,’ said Mr Battle. ‘And the fact that no one realizes it.’
‘I’m sick of pretending we know what we’re doing, when half the time we’re only the blind leading the blind.’
‘It’s the whole secret of successful investing,’ announced Brad to Mr Battle with a note of satisfaction.
‘Let’s see,’ said a befuddled waiter, arriving with our lunches. ‘You, sir, are the veal. and you the stuffed shrimp?’
‘No, no, no,’ said Mr Battle. ‘I’m the stuffed shrimp.’
‘And I’m the crabmeat salad,’ announced the banker.
‘I’m a helpless pawn in a game being played by dunces,’ I announced dully to the waiter.
‘Prawn, sir? I … I’ll have to recheck my order.’
‘Larry gets the chicken,’ said Mr Battle irritably.
‘How you doin’ today Lair?’ said Brad, as if noticing me for the first time but digging vigorously into his veal.
‘I’m at zero.’
‘Great,’ said Brad, watching the waiter pour some fresh wine in his glass. ‘Our model portfolio is up another 3 per cent this week.’
‘I’m frozen in a sea of muck,’ I continued in the same dull monotone.
‘Eat your chicken,’ said Mr Battle irritably.
‘I don’t want chicken,’ I said, now noticing the plump breast stewing in its sauces on my plate.
‘Really?’ said the banker. ‘What do you want?’
‘A new life,’ I said.
‘Not on the menu,’ snapped Mr Battle.
43
As if the Gods hadn’t been able to figure enough ways to make me a loser, they came up with a new one. On the workday before the Thanksgiving holiday in late November Honoria, perhaps making up for not inviting me to her father’s Hudson River estate for the long weekend, agreed to have lunch with me in a little restaurant in the Village. I had vague hopes of perhaps receiving a little feminine sympathy, when Honoria, as the dessert was served, made a quiet little announcement.
‘Oh, by the way,’ she said with the matter-of-factness of a woman reporting on the condition of her laundry, ‘I’m not pregnant.’
I’d been trying to be lively and positive so as to show I wasn’t the loser everyone thought I was, and was caught with a bright fake smile and, slow on the uptake, held it as I stared at her.
‘You’re not … pregnant …?’ I finally managed, still with my frozen grin.
‘No,’ Honoria said smiling politely as the waiter brought her mousse and two coffees. ‘Apparently I was mistaken earlier.’
‘You were mistaken
‘Yes. In fact, I’m having my period right now.’
‘You’re having your period.’
‘Yes … Ummm, this mousse is delicious.’
‘After three months you’re having another period.’
‘Yes. Quite amazing. Probably stress-related.’
‘You have a three-month-long stress-related false pregnancy but now you’re having a period
‘Yes …’
‘What did your gynaecologist say?’
‘I never saw him … You want a taste of this mousse?’
‘You, who normally have a regular physical check-up every other week, didn’t bother to see your gynaecologist even though you thought you were pregnant.’
‘Things have been quite busy lately.’
During this exchange my smile had quite definitely been erased. My coffee cup had been lowered. My hands were in my lap mashing my napkin into a tiny ball and, unconsciously. I was leaning increasingly forward towards Honoria, who, equally unconsciously, was easing her chair backwards and now protecting her face by holding her coffee cup to her lips.
‘You had an abortion,’ I finally whispered.
‘I was never pregnant,’ she countered coldly.
We stared at each other. There would be no feminine comfort for me on this day, and no pretending I wasn’t a loser.
I wandered back to my office that afternoon feeling lower than I could ever remember. I felt as if I, with my failures, rather than Honoria, had killed our child. In my office I could barely function. Even if my eyes were on the monitor all I saw were a bunch of noodles swimming rapidly across the ocean of blue screen. I wondered if there was ever a finish line.
My gloom was interrupted late in the day by a nervous Miss Claybell announcing that some woman, who refused to give her name, actually wanted to open an account with me – my first new client for weeks.
‘She says she wants to invest some money with Blair, Battle and Pike,’ said Miss Claybell with her usual nervous efficiency. ‘And she won’t do it unless she can do it with you.’
‘Well, she obviously must be in love with my recent track record,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Show her in.’
I was halfway out of my chair to meet my new client when Miss Claybell ushered in a woman who looked utterly unlike any woman I’d ever seen and yet was vaguely familiar. She had on an extravagant blonde wig and was dressed as if for some artsy cocktail party, her black leather skirt so short that fully half her body seemed to fall below the hemline. But her face, despite all the garish make-up, was that of a woman at least in her forties.
‘You like it?’ the woman asked, placing a hand on one hip and posing in a cliché position of sexual enticement. ‘It was a six-to-one shot that I usually only wear when I want to frighten or entice sixty-year-old bankers.’
‘Mrs Ecstein! I said, suddenly recogni
zing her despite the fact that her hair colour and style, clothing and personal manner were all fifteen years younger than when I’d last met her. I moved around the chair to greet her. ‘I didn’t recognize you at first.’
‘I left Grandma Ecstein at home today,’ she said with a smile. ‘Say, you’ve got quite a place here,’ she went on, looking around at my impressive high-tech office. ‘You must be making a lot of money.’
‘Not lately,’ I said. ‘Or rather, all for my clients, all for my clients.’
‘I’ll bet.’ Without being asked, Arlene pulled up a chair and threw herself back into it with an exaggerated sigh of comfort. When she crossed her legs, her black-stockinged knees stared up at me like a pair of black Siamese twins.
‘Jake tells me you took a little holiday down in the mountains of Virginia,’ she went on, as I went back to my seat behind the desk. ‘Have a good time?’
‘That wasn’t exactly why I went.’
‘I know, but did you enjoy yourself?’ she persisted.
‘It was a business trip,’ I countered coldly. ‘I accomplished my business and now I’m back.’
‘Find Luke?’
‘My father is apparently dead.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says your husband.’
‘Oh. come on, you must have been in Lukedom long enough to know you can’t trust anything anyone says there, least of all Jake.’
Arlene was looking at me with friendly interest, like a bawdy aunt discussing my dating life.
‘He seemed intensely serious when he conveyed the information,’ I said. ‘Unless I get evidence to the contrary I must assume my father is dead.’
‘What did Jake say?’
Reluctantly I told her what Jake had said and given to me, including the contents of Luke’s letter. Arlene listened intently and then, when I was done, burst into a deep gravelly guffaw, shaking her head as if in disbelief.